


When The Feminist Saved Me from the Hidden Fear-Spectre on the 7th Avenue Line

by Kehuan



Category: Original Work
Genre: Gen, Misandrist Lovecraft
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-29
Updated: 2014-07-29
Packaged: 2018-02-11 00:03:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 602
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2045292
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kehuan/pseuds/Kehuan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The otherworldly fear-creature lives in New York. But that's only because he lives everywhere, in the corners of nature, and tradition, and science, and religion, and every other place we think is too old to change.</p>
<p>Inspired by a true story. Or at least a real internet comment.</p>
            </blockquote>





	When The Feminist Saved Me from the Hidden Fear-Spectre on the 7th Avenue Line

> _"FOR SOME REASON, IT’S HARD TO ACCEPT THAT THERE MAY BE DIFFERENCES IN MEN AND WOMEN."_
> 
> _You should tell that to the feminist. It seems it’s only acceptable when it's convenient._
> 
>       - Retsu Unohana

I don't usually reply to forum comments, but this caught my eye. You see...

I met The Feminist once, late at night. I was catching a train from Penn Station, hands clenched deep in my pockets and ears burning with cold, when a shadow flitted across the yellow tiles of the subway mouth. I turned, one key between my knuckles.

“Hello?” I tried to say it conversationally, as if there were nothing out of the ordinary in the sudden sliminess of the tiles, the scent of rotting flowers in the clear, dark air. I spared a dodging glance down the stairs, where a homeless man slept in his parka, insensate. Something, probably the 2 train, shook the sidewalk — I could make it if I hurried.

I could not descend. The subway would not accept me.  _Why are you alone?_ , something thought for me. _Without someone to protect you, they’ll want to kill you. Someone always wants to kill you, you ought to know that. There are just differences between men and women. Men like to kill, and women like to die. It’s evolution. Why can’t we just accept it?_

I had never realized before how hard it is to stab a thought. I won’t rule anything out, but I think it might be almost impossible. You know, for a girl.

Women, for biological reasons I decided I would have to make up later, lack the desire, capability, and upper body strength to fight otherworldly fear-beings, and schools quite reasonably decided that it wasn’t worth trying to force these things. Descending into madness, I hoped, would not be too painful a process.

But just as I closed my eyes and whispered a farewell to the boyfriend who, like an effeminate modern man, had allowed his dearest possession to leave the house unaccompanied, I felt a strange humming under my skin. It was like falling asleep on the back of a moving truck in the summer, the smooth road vibrating against your back and sun pricking your face. The sun spoke to me.

I do not remember what she said, and I would only identify her later in the pages of a zine by the mad separatist Raccoona Abelisque, deep in the forbidden archives of the NYU gender and sexuality studies rare books collection. At the time, I remember only a deep serenity, as if her light had revealed the true world, and the one I knew before was only shadows and flies, scattering cockroaches and fleeing rats. I will never forget the true world, but I should not speak of it here. Nor will I speak of what she told me next, except that I felt a peace I believe no other woman — who has not met her — has ever known.

I woke at the end of the line at Brooklyn College. “You shouldn’t fall ’sleep here,” the cleaner told me. “Dangerous late at night, especially for…”

I nodded and gathered my purse. As I stepped out, I turned back at him and raised my eyebrows. “Dangerous?” I repeated. “Yeah, it will be.” I thought of the sun’s final words and looked at him as he walked away, his thick shoulders, broad hands. No need for knuckle-keys, or clever rhetoric, or the gift of fear. “You’re gonna want to be careful out there.” I fixed the sun-world in my mind and only mouthed the last three words:

_You know… soon._

**Author's Note:**

> I write for a website called The Verge. While we have some lovely commenters, it's occasionally fun to mess with [the threads about gender](http://www.theverge.com/2014/7/28/5945501/womens-brains-got-a-huge-boost-from-better-living-conditions#248106254). And here on AO3, you don't have to actually read a comment section to find it.


End file.
